Jan Stoiber

* 1937

  • "In 1969 there were vetting sessions and people were speaking out within the party about the arrival of the troops." - "In the '70s." - "In the '70s." - "How was it going in Přední Výtoň?" - "Back then, everyone was asked how they felt about it. Usually people said it was a surprise and that they didn't agree with it, but as time went on, they started to agree with it when they took them to Čierna nad Tisou, where they discussed about it on a train... I never learned the truth, exactly how it was." - "You never considered leaving that party?" - "No, no. I believed it would get better. It did get a little better, but then again..." - "Did you believe it would get better after the soldiers arrival?" - "Well, I believed that there would be more freedom, but it tightened up again, then, and it went around somehow." - "The local national committee also wrote reports on people, residents, students when they went to secondary school and so on. What did you write there?" - "We wrote the reports on the parents. I always wrote that the person was normal, in normal condition, that they had no problems, if they had family problems, I didn't know. That was their personal matter. That their actions in public appeared to be correct. I never wrote about anyone that they were incompetent. The people were not incompetent, so there was no reason to do them any harm..." - "What did it feel like to you to write a report on a parent, and based on what you wrote, the kid could or could not study further regardless of being smart or not?" - "It was such a strange thing, I never dared to write on anyone that they were bad and that they disagreed with the socialist establishment. I couldn't know that, could I? I couldn't judge it. I never judged anything like that."

  • "What did you think about that fence being built there?" - "At the time we thought it was a protection, well, but it was the other way around, it wasn't protecting us against an external enemy, it was preventing our people from running away." - "And those border guard helpers, how did those soldiers actually establish cooperation?" - "They enlisted the citizens, yes, there was cooperation with them in the National Committee, that was normal. And they would notify them when something suspicious was going on and that there was some person who shouldn't be there. And so on. That way they knew when something was going on." - "Did those border guards ever ask you to cooperate with them?" - "Yes, I also cooperated with them for a while, but I left. I was married by then, that was sometime in 1966 or 1967 when my wife was working at the farm. They were hauling out the urea, somebody had to go and open up the back, with a tractor. So she went in there and saw a man hiding in a bush. So she came to tell me, and I passed the information to the unit. They were looking for a killer from Pardubice at the time. They caught him. And when we had a meeting of the helpers, it was in 1969, the commander said, 'You know, Honza, I know your wife saw him... and they caught him, but she's not a helper, we have people we need more, so we'll give the reward to them.' So I said, 'Goodbye then, here's my card,' and I was done. And Honza Říčánek also left. We left, because the organization didn't care about others or its higher purpose, they cared only about each other."

  • „So some kind of a PS man stood there and said: ‚Where are you going? You cannot go there...‘, although it was outside the area. They had a guard here over Lipenská dam, the second was in Frýdava, and when someone came, they just would not let them through. They´d just say: ‚You cannot go there‘, although it was outside the border area. That was the regime. Once my uncle came to visit me from the Eastern Germany and I knew he´d come, so I announced it ahead, and still they´d not let him to Lipno, so he went to Budějovice, where my sister lived and came here together with her and then they´d let them both go. It was just beyond imagination. You´d have to have a special passing card to get to the banned area and even I didn´t have it being the chairman of the national committee...“

  • „...When the Germans were displaced, there was a tough regime as they had to give away everything from milk, churn, they could not kill their own pig, had to give up their sewing machines and bicycles. They could not own it anymore... they would bring it to the municipality and everything was pilled up and got stolen as usual. It is sad and I believe it has been happening until today; the houses were empty, usually with broken windows and doors... the vandals´ job... and when I look today at some empty house, it is the same again. People do not appreciate things, the fact it ought to remain as is... that is just sad.“

  • „Here was a resettlement. All German inhabitants were displaced from the village, so that almost nobody stayed here. Just seven Austrian and German families. New settlers came here; first the Bulgarians, Hungarians, later the Slovaks and Rumanian emigrants... but those people came here and there was no cultural centre to create a relation towards the place... there was a huge migration, people would come and go, especially at estates and forests, because no other work existed here, so the biggest migration was during the 1950th until 1960th.“

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Přední Výtoň 7, 21.08.2015

    (audio)
    duration: 59:54
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Horní Planá, 22.06.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 02:02:15
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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I’m quite happy with the life I’ve lived

Jan Stoiber (2021)
Jan Stoiber (2021)
photo: Natáčení ve studiu

Jan Stoiber was born on 17 June 1937 in Přední Výtoň. Both his parents were of German nationality. Thanks to his father’s work in the paper mills in Loučovice, the Stoibers were allowed to stay in their native village after the end of the Second World War and did not share the fate of their expelled relatives and neighbours. Between 1952 and 1954, he trained as a paper pulp maker in Větřní and took up a position in the Loučovice paper mills. In 1959, he completed two years of military service with the anti-tank defence in Štúrovo, Slovakia. From 1960 to 1989 he was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. In 1963 he signed a cooperation with the military intelligence service and underwent several months of training as a spy, but left later at his own request. From 1964 to 1990 he served as chairman of the Local National Committee in Přední Výtoň. In 1994 he was elected deputy mayor of Přední Výtoň and then its mayor in 1998. In 2021, Jan Stoiber was living in Přední Výtoň.